On October 9, 2009 at age 60, Tim died of lung cancer. This morning as I hit 50, we celebrated his life at his funeral at Williams Funeral Home and Polk Memorial Gardens. An obituary can be found on the funeral home website.

Tim was very proud of his service in the US Army where he was a trombonist (see above right). When he retired from GM in 2004, he rekindled his smoldering passion for the trombone. In a similar situation but not retired, I was blessed in 2005 to meet Tim when I stumbled across him with an old friend and some new ones playing trombone quartets at the Blair School of Music. These guys were serious musicians.

Tim was the one guy in the group that I thought I could entice to join and tolerate my fledgling Bone Therapy group. His addition, immediately elevated its quality, attracted other players and in the end drew all the members of the quartet in to the group. Without Tim, Bone Therapy might have taken years to reach it’s current excellent state of development. We have and will continue to miss him.

Tim contributed a huge amount of his accumulated music to the group and we combined our collections of Tutti’s Trombone charts so that we ended up with all 7 available pieces. Tim and I loved multi-trombone jazz the most. We formed the Osteoblast quartet as a vehicle to play both classical and jazz quartets at the highest level.

We also dreamed of putting together a Tutti’s Trombone-type group and finally on June 20, 2009 we assembled the Dectet for the best 2 hours of my life (see link). The next day when Tim played in church with the Osteoblast quartet, it was his last event with us.

In retrospect, Tim had been struggling during the month of June. At our Frist performance early in the month while playing our quartet version of Stardust, Tim played the solo part as he had many times before but missed the repeat. A cough was also bothering him. When we met for the Dectet, Tim had prepared one of the lead parts of the double quartet version of Stardust but he passed it off to Wes without a word. There had to be something very wrong for him to pass up that part he loved so much.

But, I knew something was seriously up when Tim missed a rehearsal. I am not sure he ever missed a rehearsal or performance, and certainly not without letting me know. I later found out from his wife Connie that he had been diagnosed with Lung cancer. The cancer had obstructed one lung and had already gone to his liver. Tim had been playing with one lung tied behind his back for a while, I would guess.

Tim valiantly fought through pneumonias, radiation and chemotherapy, and blood clots to the lung, spending as much or more time in the hospital as at home with his wife, birds, and other animals.

Today at his funeral we honored TIm by playing some of the pieces he loved. Wes Ramsay, Lynn Lewis, Dan Owens, Allen Rumbaugh, Wendell Couts, Eric Wenker, Frank Rembert, Allen Miller, Don Bloomquist, Cork Heyning and Rob Sherrill joined me in this tribute.

We played “Quiet Place” before the service, Wes soloed with the group on “Amazing Grace” during the service and we finished with “Be Thou My Vision” and “Achieved is the Glorious Work”.

Tim will always be remembered in our hearts and minds, and in the pages of this website. Search for Tim in the search box here.